Idea/Suggestion: Sea map with cliffs

[RogerN]

The land masses in my map above are actually pretty small. You could not fit very much infrastructure on them, and they are all islands - so sea bombardment could pretty much flatten all of them.

Which brings me to my next question...

Would you prefer more substantial land masses? Something like Coast to Coast? Or just the islands duking it out?

[TheFatController]

Coast to coast

Actually my ideal sea map would be very similar to Small supreme battle field, however the 2 corner islands would be rocky and high with 3 land-to-sea choke points (one middle & two at the sides), the path from one island to the other would be a Tropical style sand bank that let ships and units cross, the sea wouldn't be swamped with metal just like 20 spots on each island and 20 in the whole sea. Also there'd be rocky islands dotted all over with room for a few turrets or just to provide stuff for ships to manuever around :)

[PicassoCT]

And when we have Cliffs, can we have castles on them.. so that if we porc, no ships, no kbots, no hovercrafts and no amphibs can attack. And then we could prepare for the final nuke and Airwar we all ever wanted...till the first guy dies of boredom..

Hovercowars

[RogerN]

A very thorough description! I'll see what I can do...

[RogerN]

First draft of Porky Islands:





Grr... it looks like the ImageShack server which is hosting the overhead view has gone down.

[TheFatController]

That looks awesome so far! Maybe raise the whole land up a bit with steeper beaches (unless that somehow breaks it).

Another idea could be to make no obvious starting spots (clumps of 3 metal spots) and just scatter the islands evenly with spots to make it a bit more ambiguous as to how many players the map is "for".

Good work tho

[Saktoth]

Such a long, thin semi-submerged sand bank will slow units walking across it terribly.

There are two solutions. First, have it be mostly just above the water, with several deeper channels cut through it for ships to pass. Secondly, apply a typemap to that sandy area that speeds up kbots and vehicles so they go at the same speed in the water as they do above.

Also be aware that in a ship-passable area, many units cannot fire because their guns are in the water. Some others (often flash) act as amphibs- they cannot be detected other than with sonar. This makes a lot of units play very, very differently. Finally, a lot of ships have different minimum depths, so test several types of ships (and subs) to ensure the crossing is deep enough.

As a favour, if you can assure that the beaches are hovercraft-traversable in CA id appreciate it, hovercraft have a lower slope tolerance in CA (IE please dont follow TFC's suggestion )

[RogerN]

Such a long, thin semi-submerged sand bank will slow units walking across it terribly.

I'm less concerned with how to speed them up than with should they be sped up in the first place. Isn't this supposed to be a map for sea battles? I wouldn't want to make it easy to rush with flashspam as usual.

[TheFatController]

I like the idea that the beaches that connect the land bridge could be heavily defended against land assaults but the way could be cleared by the sea players via naval bombardment then you send in the tanks

[Fanger]

How deep does the water get...?

[RogerN]

The shallow water ought to be about 20 units deep. The deep water has a maximum depth of about 100 units deep.

In my tests, submarines and ships could cross the shallow water just fine. There will be more interference in the next version, though, since I'm adding some more above-water parts to the sand bar.

[SirArtturi]

Looks really good. Just balanced metal placing and i will bet it will become popular sea map... So you say shallow is passable by submarines and boats. Is it passable by epoch ? I havent been yet possible to make shallowpass passable by epoch. Im working on this one map and i was able to make it passable by millenium but not epoch. Well i think that is pretty dumb to leave it like that. Maybe i just need to raise water level with couple numbers. What is the unit height of epoch underwater level anyways ?

[ralphie]

Im working on this one map and i was able to make it passable by millenium but not epoch.

That's as good as you're going to get it. Epoch wants water too deep to cross with land units.

[Saktoth]

Such a long, thin semi-submerged sand bank will slow units walking across it terribly.

I'm less concerned with how to speed them up than with should they be sped up in the first place. Isn't this supposed to be a map for sea battles? I wouldn't want to make it easy to rush with flashspam as usual.

You wont. You dont get it in SSB, its usually the sea players who win SSB since the middle is so easy to hold. On a submerged causeway you cant secure territory, you re-enforce slower, are vulnerable to ships, half your units cant fire, etc etc. It wouldnt be feasible unless you owned all the sea (even then, an uphill battle vs porc).


Also, ensure that ships have a nice spot to start. For starting in water, a bay with close metal spots (remember, com cant walk very fast underwater, dont spread his starting metal spots too much). For starting on land, a nice, straight drop off into the sea near some metal spots so that a fac sea can be built near or from the shore. Sea starts are very awkward on a lot of maps because you have to walk for ages with your com (or risk starting without enough mexes and stalling hard).